08.30.10

The IRS has now been added to Obama’s arsenal of thugs. Be careful that you don’t do anything (like publicly criticizing Obama) to draw unwanted attention to yourself. We’ve all seen the looks of disdain that Obama imparts on those who publicly challenge or question him. Now he will make sure you or your organization suffers the most minute scrutiny by the IRS.

The Internal Revenue Service has delayed approval of tax-exempt status for a private organization and is reviewing its educational work, telling a lawyer for the foundation that it must be examined by Washington because its activities may “contradict the administration’s public policies.”

The allegation is contained in a federal lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by Z STREET, a Merion Station, Pa., group that educates on the statehood and status of Israel.

“Not only is it patently un-American but it is also a clear violation of the First Amendment for a government agency to penalize an organization because of its political position on Israel or anything else,” said Z STREET president Lori Lowenthal Marcus, a former First Amendment lawyer.

Read the outline for putting America back on track, in “The Tea Party Manifesto” and “Taking America Back”

“This situation is the same as if the government denied a driver’s license to people because they were Republicans or Democrats. It goes against everything for which our country stands.”

Contacted by WND, IRS officials declined to comment on the publicly filed lawsuit or even say whether they would respond.

The complaint states that the organization was working with IRS Agent Diane Gentry, who had delayed a decision on its routine application for tax-exempt status for the educational organization.

“Agent Gentry further stated to counsel for Z STREET, ‘these cases are being sent to a special unit in the D.C. office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the administration’s public policies,'” the lawsuit reports.

Tax-exempt status routinely is granted to many types of organizations in addition to churches. Charitable, scientific, literary and education purposes all qualify under the IRS code’s Section 501(c)(3) and Marcus pointed out that the Council on American-Islamic Relations – which was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing case and lobbies heavily in Congress for its agenda – is granted the status.

Organizations not allowed to use the IRS code section are harmed because, donors are unable to deduct contributions from their taxable income, Z STREET argues in its complaint.

“The IRS’s refusal to grant tax-exempt status to Z STREET has inhibited the organization’s fundraising efforts, and therefore impeded its ability to speak and to educate the public regarding the issues that are the focus and purpose of Z STREET,” according to the lawsuit.

With another school starting, it’s necessary to stay plugged into what your children are learning. The liberal education system will waste no opportunity to indoctrinate your children and attempt to “normalize” the homosexual lifestyle.

“Enter key terms in the search function like ‘lesbian,’ ‘gay,’ ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’…and if you start pulling up a lot of books with homosexual themes, that’s a real red flag to you because technically, the library should reflect the school curriculum,” [Candi Cushman, education analyst for Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink] explains. “It’s also a place teachers can go to pull out resources for use in the classroom.”

CitizenLink has provided a list of books that should be of concern to parents, which can be found at TrueTolerance.org. The education analyst goes on to note other measures parents can take, including submitting a note in their child’s file saying they want to be notified before any controversial, sexual topic is brought up. She says that note should stay on file through each grade level.

“A lot of states have policies that allow parents to opt out or exempt their kids from controversial teaching, especially in the sexual realm,” Cushman adds. “So you want to know about that and exercise that right.”

There can’t be any denying that the only 100% proven method of avoiding sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy is abstinence.

In response to heavy criticism, the Department of Health and Human Services has reluctantly released the full results of a national study that favors abstinence education.

The survey, which was initially released in summary form only, revealed that about 70 percent of parents and their teenagers believed teens should wait until marriage to have sex. But when a researcher requested the full report and was denied by HHS officials, that launched a grassroots effort by pro-family groups encouraging the public to file Freedom of Information Act requests.

“As a result of the overwhelming support of citizens across the U.S. doing just that, [the government] relented and posted the full report,” explains Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA). “We’re glad that they made a good decision in that regard for clarity and openness.”

08.27.10

Keep watching this. A peace treaty between Israel and the Arab world is a major tick in the prophetic clock.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday evening began forming Israel’s negotiating team for the direct peace negotiations set to commence next week in Washington, the Prime Minister’s Office announced.

Netanyahu will assemble a small negotiating team that will be under his direct supervision, in order to allow for thorough, serious and speedy talks.

Netanyahu was expected to meet with advisers Yitzhak Molcho, Ron Dermer, and Uzi Arad, among others, in order to pick who will be part of the delegation that will travel to Washington, where direct peace talks with the Palestinian Authority are set to start on September 2.

Until he stepped down earlier this month for personal reasons, Heinonen was deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and head of its nuclear safeguards department, which verifies that countries’ nuclear programmes are not being diverted for military use.

A no-nonsense Finn, he was one of the U.N. agency’s leading experts on Iran, which denies Western suspicions that its nuclear programme is aimed at making bombs despite intelligence indications to the contrary, which he investigated for years.

In the interview published on Thursday, Heinonen said the Islamic Republic now possessed three tonnes of low-enriched uranium, material which can be used to fuel nuclear power plants, or form the core of a bomb if refined much further.

“In theory, it is enough to make one or two nuclear arms. But to reach the final step, when one only has just enough material for two weapons, does not make sense,” Heinonen said in the interview carried out just before he left office.

08.26.10

The mainstream media typically makes it a very apparent goal to present any conservative person or movement in a very negative light. It is sometimes laughable just how they will “bend” and “twist” a story to meet that end.
I remember during the last presidential campaign and year in Obama’s term, how the press would absolutely refuse to ask him any difficult questions. He was their man and they were determined to get him elected, at any cost.
Nothing has really changed. The mainstream media continues their biased reporting, embolden to the point they scarcely even try to hide their bias anymore.

Since 2007, the Media Research Center (MRC) has collected numerous examples of what it calls the “vile and vicious rhetoric” of left-wing radio hosts. Unlike accusations from the left, which has attempted to smear Rush Limbaugh with phony quotes, interested parties can find an audio or video example of every one of the quotes on the MRC’s website.

Rich Noyes, director of research at MRC, recently authored the study called The Real Radio Hatemongers: Left-Wing Radio Hosts’ Track Record of Vile and Vicious Rhetoric, in which he reveals a number of false claims made by liberals.

“You have people like Ed Schultz saying that conservatives want Obama to be shot. This one host, Mike Malloy, jokes about how Rush Limbaugh should choke to death on his own throat fat, and Montel [Williams] has talked about [how GOP Congresswoman] Michelle Bachman should slit her own throat,” Noyes explains. “These are things they say on the air.”

This is certainly not news to us. We keep hoping the rest of the world will awaken to this fact.

As the son of a Hamas co-founder who became a Christian, a spy for Israel and a consultant to the Holy Land Foundation terror-finance trial, Mosab Hassan Yousef offers a rare perspective on the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood – at once the spawn of nearly every major Islamic terrorist group and of “mainstream” operatives in the U.S. such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Yousef, who recently was granted asylum in the U.S. after the Department of Homeland Security tried to deport him, told WND in a telephone interview Americans must understand that the ultimate goal of the highly influential Brotherhood is not terrorism but to establish a global Islamic state over the entire world.

“If they can establish this in a peaceful manner, that’s fine,” he said. “But they are required by the Quran to establish this global Islamic state on the rubble of every civilization, every constitution, every government.”

The Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas in 2008 – the largest terror-finance case in U.S. history – presented evidence of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “100-year plan” to gradually destroy the U.S. and Western civilization from within “so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

“This is not a doctrine of some freak Muslim,” Yousef observed. “It’s the doctrine, the requirement, of the god of Islam himself and his prophet, whom they praise every day.”

One of the Brotherhood’s prime strategies to help achieve its ultimate aim is to spin off groups such as the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, that attempt to give Islam a positive face, he pointed out.

CAIR, casting itself as a human rights organization, has often been called on by government and media to represent Muslims in the U.S. But it’s origin as a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas is now widely documented.

We can only hope that people have woken up to the destruction the Democrats and this administration have done to our country.

U.S. Senator John McCain survived a Republican primary challenge in Arizona on Tuesday. Senator McCain was the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 2008, but may count himself lucky this year in an election climate that features voters angry with incumbent politicians from both parties.

2010 is shaping up as the year of the angry voter, and incumbent politicians from both parties are taking notice.

The latest example of voter anger is playing out in New York City over the controversial plan to build a mosque and Islamic center near the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks in lower Manhattan.

What is behind the anger?

The reasons for the anger vary, but much of it is related to the national economy. High unemployment, a weak housing market and growing pessimism about the future create the kind of frustration that leads to demands for political change in Washington.

Rusty is from Texas, and many things make him angry this year, especially the way President Barack Obama is running the country. He is a member of the Tea Party, which is not a political party, but a movement of grassroots conservatives unhappy with President Obama, the power of the federal government, government spending and the growing national debt.

Mike Harvey is a truck driver from Arizona. He is angry too and is counting on the Tea Party movement to help elect new members of Congress in the November elections.

“I hope they grow some legs and I hope they get something done before this place turns into Venezuela or Cuba,” he said. “They might have health care, but go ask them how they like it. And I think that if Obama gets his way, he is going to turn this place into Cuba and I do not want to see it.”

President Obama’s push for health-care and financial reform has also sparked a conservative backlash against the role of the central government in the everyday lives of Americans, says Quinnipiac University pollster Peter Brown.

“Only two percent of voters think that the government does the right thing almost all of the time. And only another 16 percent say government does the right thing most of the time. That is a pretty damning indictment of the government and its ability to do the right thing from the American people,” said Brown.

08.25.10

My “In Box” and the news from Bible prophecy circles bulge with talk of Israel’s almost-certain attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The scuttlebutt has been coming hard and fast since 2007 or even earlier. Each summer was going to bring an assault by Israel, and all out Mid-East war was sure to ensue.

As I write this, the predictions are at fever pitch. John Bolton, former American U.N. ambassador, declared that Israel had until Saturday, August 21, to take out Iran’s nuclear plants, or risk–by their bombing–the spreading of radiation contamination across the area and into the Persian Gulf.

The flood of emails proclaims that this is it. The region is going to go up in flames, with Russia coming to the aid of Iran, because the Russians are so heavily invested in the Iranian nuclear program. There will be Russian nuclear technicians installing the radioactive rods necessary to fuel and power up the facility. They will be in harm’s way, and Moscow–from which Gog of Magog prophetic infamy will come–will not abide such an insult. The thought frequently conjectured: Could this be the beginning of Ezekiel 38-39–the Gog-Magog attack?

Israel cannot afford, the argument goes, to allow the facility to come on line. This, because the spent fuel rods will provide plutonium and other by-products to give Iran the materials from which they can produce nuclear weapons. That’s a simplification of the matters involved, but should suffice, I hope, for purposes of making the point of this commentary.

This attack by Israel will be, the emailers apparently believe, prophecy being fulfilled. This preemptive attack by the Jewish state upon the land of ancient Persia surely will, the messages exclaim, instigate a chain reaction of events. These events will bring the Gog-Magog attack, and perhaps Isaiah 17:1 will also be fulfilled. Some even believe it will provoke the long-pondered-over Psalm 83 war supposed by many to be in the offing.

I could have waited until Saturday, August 21, had passed to write this piece, but chose not to do so. My reason for not waiting until after that time is primarily that I don’t believe this is the time for the Gog-Magog War, or for the proposed Psalm 83 conflict, should it be an actual prophecy. Exigencies just aren’t ripe for producing the horrific results such conflicts as the Gog-Magog, or even the supposed Psalm 83, conflagrations would inflict. At least, that’s my view from my present perspective.

More than that, I believe that’s the way it is presented from the perspective of Bible prophecy. One thing I do think is an almost 100-percent certainty is that Israel isn’t going anywhere. Iranian tyrant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s promises to erase Israel from the face of the Middle East and the world are empty threats. It will never happen–not even with the help of the Gog nation, Russia.

Why do I say “an almost 100-percent certainty”?

This goes to the argument of those who say that it is possible that Israel could be removed from its land yet again. Then, all would have to again rearrange in order to get the prophetic indicators into place like they are now. God might allow Israel’s enemies to again take the Jews from the Promised Land because of their unbelief.

Zola Levitt and I were once discussing the hatred of the Arab nations for Israel. I mentioned that the late Dr. J. Vernon McGee didn’t think that the Jews being back in the land was necessarily a major signal of the nearness to Christ’s return. My friend Zola, a very passionate man when it came to Israel, got pretty exercised, as I recall. He said that he and Dr. McGee “got into it”–as the southernism goes–over this subject.

Zola said Dr. McGee said it could be that Israel might yet be removed from the land of promise. Zola didn’t like that at all, so they had a rather lively discussion on the matter, on camera. I said, “Well, Dr. McGee [who went to be with the Lord in 1988 at age 84] knows now, that’s for sure.” That seemed to calm Zola a bit.

Dr. McGee would no doubt agree that Israel is back in the land to stay, if he could have watched developments of the years since his leaving the planet. Israel being: the center of most all controversy so far as issues of war and peace are concerned; pressured by the international community to give up God’s land; at the center of a forced, phony peace process, with Iran (ancient Persia) threatening from the north. How could he or anyone being privy to such facts say otherwise?

Whatever happened last Saturday–as you read this on August 23 or later–Israel isn’t going anywhere. So, I’ll change my “almost” to an absolute 100-percent certainty.

Although Israel–and the world–are in for some terrible times ahead, I am of the firm belief that we have the very Word of God about the current and future disposition of His chosen nation. Israel is here to stay.

“And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.” (Amos 9:14-15)

It should come as no surprise that Obama pretty much hates Israel and wouldn’t mind seeing them “wiped from the face of the earth”. Apparently some American Jews are finally arriving at the same conclusion.

The plunge in Jewish support for U.S. President Barack Obama can be traced to plenty of reasons besides the president’s pro-Arab policies, according to American Thinker news editor Ed Lasky. He wrote that the president’s economic policies have a disproportionate and negative effect on American Jews.

The alarm bells went off in Democratic circles last week when the Pew Research Center reported that the number of Jews supporting Republican candidates or independents has jumped 50 percent since President Obama was elected nearly three years ago.

A poll conducted last April by McLaughlin & Associates revealed that while 78 percent of American Jews voted for Barack Obama, only 42 percent would consider voting for him again.

Claims that Jews are pro-Israel, with the insinuation that they profess dual loyalty, were championed last Saturday in an op-ed by New York Times columnist Charles Blow.

He wrote that the sinking popularity of President Obama among American Jews “is no doubt a reaction, at least in part, to the Obama administration having taken a hard rhetorical stance with Israel, while taking ‘special time and care on our relationship with the Muslim world,’ as Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, put it in June. If that sounds like courtship, it is.”

Lasky pointed out that American Jews, for whom many the term “pro-Israel” does not contradict the establishment of a new Arab country headed by the Palestinian Authority, have plenty of domestic reasons to conclude “it’s time for a change” in the American administration.

08.24.10

One of the clearest indications of the progression of Bible prophecy is the frequency of end-time events. In Matthew 24:8, we are told that the last days will be the tail-end of an exponential curve of activity. Jesus mentioned a great variety of signs—spiritual, natural, societal, and geopolitical—and then He said that these signs will be like “birth pangs.”

As the birth of a baby approaches, the birth pangs increase two ways: frequency and intensity. Thus, Jesus was saying that the closer we get to the time of His return, the more frequent and intense the signs will become. There will be more earthquakes and more intense ones. Likewise, things like famine, pestilence, and war will increase in frequency and intensity.

This year started out with monstrous earthquakes striking the nations of Haiti, Chile, and China. The death toll from the Haiti quake has now risen to more than 230,000. The Chile earthquake is in the record books as the seventh-greatest earthquake ever recorded.

In the past few weeks, there has been an upsurge in birth-pang activity. Three categories stand out:

Floods
Many have been struck by noteworthy flooding. In April, the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro had terrible flooding. But the most remarkable flooding has occurred in Pakistan, where the deluge has been of epic proportions: 20 million people have been affected, with more than 1,400 dead, 900,000 homes damaged, and 3.5 million children at risk for waterborne diseases. One-fifth of the nation is now under water, and the rains are continuing to fall.

Drought
A severe drought in Russia has devastated the nation’s wheat crop. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin banned all exports of grain until the end of the year. The ban has pushed prices to their highest level in two years in the United States. Russian grain exports totaled 21.4 million metric tons last year, about 17 percent of the global grain trade. The Middle East is heavily dependant on Russian grain. Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, is left to wonder whether current contracts with Russia will be honored. If we should have a drought in another country that is a key grain exporter, global famine could become a real possibility.

Pestilence
The World Health Organization called on health authorities around the globe to monitor a multi-drug-resistant superbug that surfaced in South Asia and spread to Britain. The WHO said a new gene enables some types of bacteria to be highly resistant to almost all antibiotics. With some bacterial strains, the death rate is as high as 30 percent.

In the U.S., there is a growing problem with bedbugs. The city of New York had 11,000 complaints about bedbugs last year. Bedbugs have been discovered recently in theaters, clothing stores, hotels, housing projects, and posh apartments. They have even been found in the Empire State Building.

This level of activity is amazing when you consider that the year is only a little more than half over. The Lord certainly seems to be trying to get man’s attention, but I can see that man’s stubbornness is a huge obstacle. It amazes me to see how quickly historic disasters fade from memory.

Several news organizations are reporting that support for the flood victims in Pakistan may be suffering from donor fatigue. In the first two weeks of the crisis, the funds being pledged by rich nations are just 20 percent of the amount given for the Haiti earthquake. In the same way, there may be a birth-pang of fatigue at work. I have not seen prophetic awareness this low since the early 1990s.

God is very patient, but He is no fool. He is not going to send an endless number of warning signs. I would never say that apathy will force God to act, but it could be the calling card that the Almighty has decided to use to shake up our world.

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth” (Luke 21:25-26).

08.23.10

These are just some of the problems that border states face. The local hospital system has lost millions of dollars to illegal immigrants.
How long are we going to allow this problem to continue unchecked?
If left to Obama and company, the only resolution they will choose is amnesty, which practically guarantees them the unlimited, unchecked power of a single party system, after all the illegal immigrants reward him by voting Democrat.
This is not the country we want.

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas spent at least $250 million in the past year for medical care and imprisonment of illegal immigrants and other non-citizens.

The House State Affairs Committee heard testimony in Austin. Lawmakers who convene in January could face a projected $18 billion budget shortfall.

Jerry McGinty, with the Texas Department of Corrections, says prisons last month had 11,766 inmates who are foreign citizens and housing them costs $171 million annually. The federal government reimburses 10 percent.

Martin Luther once said that the central test on the battlefield is the soldier’s response in the face of the most pointed attack of the enemy:

“If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.” (Emphasis mine.)

Count Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck as the latest deserters in the culture war and in the battle for sexual normalcy. They have flinched at “precisely that little point which the world and the devil….are attacking,” and so have forfeited the right to consider themselves any longer culture warriors.

Ann Coulter is the headliner at “Homocon 2010,” a September 25 gathering of so-called gay “conservatives.” And Glenn Beck has folded his hand and cashed in his chips on the issue of gay marriage. Even Rush Limbaugh, who supports counterfeit same-sex marriages in the form of civil unions, won’t go that far.

Let’s be clear: endorsing homosexual behavior is not a conservative position. Period. Supporting special rights based on aberrant sexual behavior is not conservative, period. Supporting either civil unions or marriages based entirely on using the alimentary canal for sexual purposes is not conservative, period.

Even Darwinian evolutionists know better than to believe there is something healthy about homosexual conduct. They know it cannot lead to the propagation of the species, which, after all, is what evolution is supposed to be all about.

Coulter justifies her Benedict Arnold impersonation by saying she speaks all the time in hostile environments, such as Harvard. Okay, Ann, how exactly is this a hostile environment? You’re being welcomed as a heroine, as the Joan of Arc of homosexuality, literally the poster child for “Homocon 2010.” You are the goddess of gayness for the moment.

You will be received with a standing ovation for pandering to a group that wants to put open homosexuals in the same showers and barracks with sexually normal soldiers (priority #4) and is fiercely opposed to any attempt to elevate protection for natural marriage to the Constitution (priority #7 – see here).

You are taking money from people who want to destroy the U.S. military and destroy the institution of marriage. Good luck getting us to believe that’s a good thing.

You accuse Joseph Farah of being a “publicity whore.” But who is the one here literally selling out her moral principles for a hefty wad of cash? If Homocon is Elliott Spitzer, you are in danger of becoming the Ashley Dupre of the conservative movement.

As far as Ronald Reagan’s dictum that “[t]he person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor,” let’s have the average husband try that out on his wife. “Honey, I’m faithful 80% of the time. There’s no reason for you to come after me with the frying pan.”

Now you can redeem yourself by taking a strong stand at Homocon 2010 against open homosexual service in the military and against gay marriage. If you take this opportunity to demonstrate your much-vaunted fearlessness by getting right in the face of your hosts, all is forgiven.

Glenn Beck has completely and shamelessly surrendered on the issue of gay marriage, and did so on Bill O’Reilly’s program, only the most watched cable news program in all TV land.

Beck said “we have bigger fish to fry” than protecting natural marriage, which, outside of being the bedrock and foundation of any healthy society and the cornerstone of Western civilization, is apparently not that important to Mr. Beck. He’s done this even though the members of his church, the Mormon church, were willing to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to defend natural marriage in California.

Even O’Reilly, who is a notorious squish on the subject of the acceptability of homosexual behavior, was taken aback by Beck’s capitulation and rightly accused him of “ignoring the profound change in the American family.”

You can retract your surrender at your “Divine Destiny” event at the Kennedy Center on August 27. If you do, all is forgiven.

Bottom line: August 27 is the Rubicon for Glenn Beck, and September 25 for Ann Coulter.

Both Ms. Coulter and Mr. Beck seem, at least for the moment, to have forgotten John Adams’ sage observation: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Here’s hoping – and praying – that both of these two former stalwarts in the cause will come to their senses in time to return to their posts on the wall instead of giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Conservatives will be quick to forgive. But before forgiveness comes repentance.

As Iran, with Russia’s help, gets ready to flip the switch on its first nuclear reactor, Washington is engaged in a frenzied debate over whether Israel should consider launching an air attack designed to cripple Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.

But key military officials and analysts say Iran has already passed the point where a strike would deal its entire nuclear program a fatal blow. The country might be persuaded to abandon any efforts to build a bomb, they say, but — like it or not — Iran is going nuclear. And no number of Israeli F-16s is going to change that.

“We can’t stop it. We can slow it down,” Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, told FoxNews.com.

The mechanics of shutting down Iran’s nuclear program are mindboggling. The Bushehr facility — a power plant along the Persian Gulf that uses non-weapons-grade fissile material — will be Iran’s first functioning nuclear reactor; its Russian-provided fuel is expected to be loaded up starting this weekend.

But Bushehr is just one piece of a much larger puzzle.

Iran has a uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz and another at Qom, which Western allies blew the whistle on last year. Several facilities critical to the nuclear program are known to be scattered throughout the country, and others are believed to exist in unknown locations. Iran has committed to building more reactors and more enrichment facilities, and as long as it has nuclear physicists, the regime can continue to pursue its goals.

Attacking Iran’s nuclear program might be like Mickey Mouse chopping broomsticks in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The program could be taken down — but for how long?

Smith, in urging caution toward the idea of a military strike, was echoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said last year that an attack could buy time, but it would not halt the program.

But that doesn’t mean a strike is off the table, from either the United States or Israel. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated plainly in an interview on Aug. 1 that the U.S. military has an attack plan for Iran.

08.19.10

On Wednesday evening, August 18th, several hundred people gathered at the Park East Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for a most befitting tribute to the life and legacy of famed Zionist leader and visionary, Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky on the occasion of his 70th yahrzeit. Due to the geo-political realities of the age of terrorism, security was tight at the venue as attendees went through airport style checks as they entered.

Sponsored by the Americans For a Safe Israel organization which has enduring roots in the Jabotinsky movement, the evening began with an introduction by AFSI chairman Herbert Zweibon who spoke of his organization’s efforts towards educating future generations of Israeli youth about Jabotinsky’s life and prescient teachings. “We have sponsored essay contests in Israeli high schools on what Jabotinsky stood for and we are proud to say that his legacy has now been incorporated in the high school curriculum”, Mr. Zweibon said.

Born in 1880 in Odessa, Russia, the young Jabotinsky studied law and served as a correspondent for several well­ known Russian newspapers. His reports and articles were widely read and he soon became recognized as one of the brilliant exponents of Russian journalism. All his reports and articles were signed with his literary pseudonym “Altalena.” It was the fatal consequences for Jews during the Kishinev pogroms of 1903 that served as the catalyst for Jabotinsky’s lifelong commitment to the Zionist movement. As a staunch advocate for Jewish self-defense, he worked with the British mandatory regime in establishing the Zion Mule Corps in 1916 and the Jewish Legion in 1920.

Keenly cognizant of the fact that the creation of a Jewish state would only come to fruition through the dedication and tenacity of Jewish youth, Jabotinsky founded his beloved Betar Zionist youth movement in 1923, in Riga, Latvia. Named after the last fortress to fall in the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans in 135 CE and dedicated to the memory of his friend Joseph Trumpeldor who died while defending the Tel Chai fortress in the northern Galilee against Arab attacks, Betar was to play a pivotal role in saving Jewish lives during the Holocaust and in ousting the British from Palestine.

Renowned author and political commentator, Rael Jean Isaac delivered the introductory remarks for Douglas J. Feith, the evening’s keynote speaker. “Doug Feith’s father was a member of the Jabotinsky youth movement, Betar in pre-World War II Europe, so it comes as no surprise that Doug has had a lifelong interest in Jabotinsky”, she said.

Mr. Feith is a former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and served in this position from July 2001 until August 2005 in the Bush administration. He helped devise the US government’s strategy for the war on terrorism and contributed to policy making for the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. He also served as a Middle East specialist on the White House National Security Council and then as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, where he heads the Center for National Security Strategies.

“Few people are honored 70 years after their death”, intoned Mr. Feith, speaking of the unique and multifarious contributions of Jabotinsky to the Jewish people and the creation of the Jewish state. “Jabotinsky’s remarkable accomplishments and prescient ideas are still applicable today”, he continued, speaking of his perspective of the Arab/Israeli conflict. Jabotinsky was convinced that the Arabs could not be bought off with political concessions and in his essay entitled, “The Iron Wall” that was penned in 1923, he said: “Except for those who were born blind, they realized long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting “Palestine” from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall.”

While imparting a general overview of the life of Jabotinsky, Feith said that Jabotinsky was a “rational, pragmatic, non-Socialist Jewish nationalist who rejected the totalitarian nature of fascism and communism.” Mr. Feith spoke of Jabotinsky’s career as a journalist, a poet, a proponent for the revivification of the Hebrew language and a tireless fighter for Jewish statehood. During the dark days that presaged the Holocaust, Jabotinsky posited himself in the forefront of a campaign for Jewish survival. It was in Warsaw in 1938 that he told his Jewish audience, ‘liquidate the exile, before the exile liquidates you.”

“Jabotinsky viewed the creation of a Jewish state as a matter of life and death”, intoned Mr. Feith. “He was a man who combined erudition with action and as a result of his positions on Jewish resistance to subjugation and his campaign to form a Jewish army, he was unfairly smeared as a fascist” he continued.

As the father of Revisionist Zionism, Jabotinsky’s political platform of maintaining the territorial integrity of the historical land of Israel and the establishment of a Jewish state with a Jewish majority on both sides of the river Jordan was rejected by the Zionist Executive in 1935. They refused to state that “the aim of Zionism was the establishment of a Jewish state”. It was at this juncture that Jabotinsky resigned from the Zionist Organization and founded the New Zionist Organization (NZO) to conduct independent political activity for free immigration and the establishment of a Jewish State.

“Jabotinsky held a deep belief in the royalty of man; that we are all created in G-d’s image. He extolled the views of universal equality and individual liberty” said Mr. Feith. Quoting from “Shir Betar”, the Betar youth movement anthem written by Jabotinsky, Mr. Feith said, “Even in poverty a Jew is a prince, whether slave or tramp, he was born a prince, crowned with the diadem of David.”

Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s final days were spent in Camp Betar in upstate Hunter, New York. It was there that he succumbed to a heart attack and died on August 4, 1940. He was buried in New Montefiore cemetery in New York rather than in Israel, in accordance with the statement in his will, “I want to be buried outside Palestine, may NOT be transferred to Palestine unless by order of that country’s eventual Jewish government.”

Initially, after the State of Israel was established, the government headed by Prime Minister David Ben Gurion did not make such a decision, but in 1964, shortly after becoming Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol ordered the reinternment of Jabotinsky and his wife in Jerusalem at the Mount Herzl cemetery. A monument to Jabotinsky remains at his original burial site in New York.

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Fern Sidman holds a B.A, in political science from Brooklyn College. She was the educational coordinator for the Betar Youth Movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She was national director of the Jewish Defense League from 1983-1985. She was a researcher for several books written by Rabbi Meir Kahane, ZTK”L. She was the managing editor of the publication entitled, The Voice of Judea, and is a regular contributor to its web site. She is currently a writer and journalist living in New York City. Her articles have appeared in The Jewish Press, The Jewish Advocate, The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, and numerous Jewish and general web sites including, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Pipes and Michael Freund.
We are delighted to have Ms. Sidman as a regular contributor to the Jesus is Lord, A Worshipping Christian’s Blog.

Hezbollah built an elaborate network of tunnels that will allow its members to fight a future war against Israel without being exposed to Air Force bombardments and IDF surveillance, a Kuwaiti newspaper says.

According to a report published by the al-Rai newspaper, the tunnel network “is more impressive than the Paris underground,” and is meant to prevent the IDF from gravely hurting Hezbollah by aerial or ground attacks.

The report also claimed Hezbollah created an underground system of weapon caches, and that additional warehouses were dispersed in different locations above ground, so they are not damaged by IDF attacks, as was the case during the Second Lebanon War.

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda is preparing its fighters in the Arabian peninsula for the possibility of an Iran-Israel warn, urging Arab pilots to crash into targets in Israel.

A terror leader in Yemen urged Jihad supporters to exploit a future war between the Jewish State and the Ayatollah regime in order to advance al-Qaeda’s causes, the Daily Beast website reported.

The deputy chief of al-Qaeda’s arm in Yemen, Saeed al-Shehri, told supporters via an audio message that a war is expected to break out after Israel will strike Tehran’s nuclear facilities, prompting a chain reaction that would lead to an all-out regional war.

Sheri then calls on Arab Air Force pilots who endorse the cause of Jihad to fly their planes into Israeli targets, replicating the September 11 attacks. He also urged followers with access to top Arab leaders to assassinate them, similarly to the killing of “tyrant Anwar Sadat,” the Egyptian president murdered by Islamic radicals.

The cover-up, of the real motives behind the Muslims trying to be a mega-mosque next to the 9/11 site, is in full swing.

The Cordoba Initiative, the controversial group behind a proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero, has been scrubbing its website of key information and documentation.

Last week, President Obama ignited political controversy by commenting on the rights of American Muslims to build the Islamic center near the New York City site where nearly 3,000 were killed by Islamic terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001.

Cordoba’s website previously listed the group’s board members as well as a group of advisers. The names have since vanished from the site. The list of both advisers and board members are still available in web archives.

Another section of the site previously commented on the meaning of the word Cordoba, but that section has been removed.

The site read:

The Cordoba Name:

For hundreds of years during the middle ages, Cordoba was the capital of Muslim Spain. During much of its “golden age” from the 8th to 12th centuries, the Cordoba Caliphate witnessed a great flowering of culture, art, and philosophical inquiry amid a remarkable climate of religious tolerance. Religious freedom, while not perfect, was sufficient that many Jewish and Christian intellectuals emigrated to Cordoba, where they lived, wrote and flourished side by side with their Muslim counterparts in a strikingly pluralistic society. The Cordoba name reminds both Muslims and non-Muslims that a great Islamic civilization was once the most open and tolerant of its era.”

Blogger Anne Bayefsky, writing at Pajamas Media, documented how until last week, the Cordoba website featured a photograph of the project’s chairman, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, and Iranian official Mohammad Javad Larijani at an event the Initiative sponsored in Malaysia in 2008.

Larijani is an Islamic cleric and serves as secretary-general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights. His brother, Ali Larijani, is Iran’s top negotiator for nuclear issues.

Rauf was in Malaysia just last week as part of a multi-week Ramadan “public diplomacy” tour sponsored by the State Department.

The controversial photograph of Rauf and Lirijani has been removed from Cordoba’s site but is still available by web archive.

Journalist Claudia Rosett wrote at the American Thinker that immediately after Obama made his remarks about the Ground Zero mosque initiative she noticed the Cordoba website said it was “under construction.”

The tag has since been removed from the site.

Creating ‘perfect’ Islamic state

The website BigPeace.com uncovered a scrubbed section of the Cordoba website that detailed a sister project of the organization, founded by Rauf and entitled “Shari’ah Index Project.”

The project’s stated goal was to “define, interpret and implement the concept of the Islamic State in modern times.”

Before the section was scrubbed, the Cordoba website described a series of planning meetings beginning in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in August 2006: “This session consisted largely of brainstorming and exploring the idea of creating an index of Islamic governance. At its conclusion, the group presented a vision for the project as well as a roadmap.”

At the second planning meeting, in February 2007, the website documented how Rauf expanded the group to include Shariah experts from “Indonesia, Iran (to represent the Shi’a perspective), and Turkey, as well as two additional participants from Pakistan and Malaysia.”

The website did not identify the experts. However, Cordoba’s deletion of a picture of Rauf with Larijani leaves open the possibility the Iranian cleric was involved.

Fact: abstinence from sex is the only 100% proven method of avoiding sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancy.

The facts surrounding the effectiveness of abstinence cannot be disputed. With this in mind, abstinence detractors fall back on a mantra of “well, everyone’s going to do it anyway”. You see, in their minds, you are nothing more than an over-glorified chimp who has no ability to make rational decisions when faced with a sexual dilemma. According to them, you will disconnect all rational thought and throw yourself into the situation. At least that is their hope.
Many of us feel that we do have control of our emotions. That sex before marriage is wrong.
Interestingly enough, the studies back up our position better than the positions of our detractors. Good luck on hearing that from the Obama’s cronies and the mainstream media. They want to normalize sex with anyone, any age, any place, anytime.

The headline from an Associated Press story on Sunday reads “Teen sex not always bad for school performance.” The article quotes research presented at a meeting of the American Sociological Association, stating that teens in committed relationships do no better or worse in school than those who do not have sex.

However, Concerned Women for America’s (CWA) Dr. Janice Crouse believes the major point of the study is that there are predictable outcomes when comparing teens who engage in casual sex with virgins. Janice Crouse 2Those include “lower GPAs, more problems in school [or] less attendance at school.” Crouse also adds that “they have very predictable kinds of problems, so to say that those who are in a serious relationship don’t have those problems…really doesn’t pass the common-sense test.”

She notes that another focal point of the study is that 14 percent of teens who are having sex have had four or more partners.

“That to me is the headline, and we know from looking at the data that those kids have very predictable problems,” Crouse points out. “They are at high, high risk for STDs; they are at high, high risk for all sorts of extra problems when it comes to risky behaviors.”

The abstinence advocate concludes that the story about the new research is designed to debunk positive abstinence studies.

Further to the point that abstinence only works, there is almost a cover-up involved, by Obama and company, in keeping this information repressed. Keep in mind that Obama stated up front that he wanted to see all funding for abstinence only programs stopped.

The full results of a national study that favors abstinence education is being withheld from researchers and the public.

The taxpayer-supported survey found that around 70 percent of parents and their teenagers believed that teens should wait until marriage to have sex. Despite release of the study’s summary and its highlight at two major public health conferences last year, the Department of Health and Human Services is withholding the full results according to Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Foundation.

“When a researcher [Dr. Lisa Rue] asked the HHS for the full results, she [was told it] is not public information and it has not been released to the public and so you don’t have access to it,” relates Huber. “[I find that] a little incredulous since it was shared publicly at two different venues.”

Huber questions the motivation of the Obama administration, noting that “as of this past fiscal year, President Obama specifically put in his budget a desire to end all funding for abstinence education.”

She hopes a change will be made soon. “We think that an administration that wants things to be open and clear should certainly do something different than the decision that is currently being exercised,” Huber remarks.

08.18.10

Our judicial system is insane.
Now it is acceptable, in the name of “freedom of speech”, to lie about military service and awards.
Where will it end?

PASADENA, Calif. – A three-year-old federal law that makes it a crime to falsely claim to have received a medal from the U.S. military is unconstitutional, an appeals court panel in California ruled Tuesday.

The decision involves the case of Xavier Alvarez of Pomona, Calif., a water district board member who said at a public meeting in 2007 that he was a retired Marine who received the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration.

Alvarez was indicted in 2007. He pleaded guilty on condition that he be allowed to appeal on First Amendment grounds. He was sentenced under the Stolen Valor Act to more than 400 hours of community service at a veterans hospital and fined $5,000.

A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with him in a 2-1 decision Tuesday, agreeing that the law was a violation of his free-speech rights. The majority said there’s no evidence that such lies harm anybody, and there’s no compelling reason for the government to ban such lies.

The dissenting justice insisted that the majority refused to follow clear Supreme Court precedent that false statements of fact are not entitled to First Amendment protection.

The act revised and toughened a law that forbids anyone to wear a military medal that wasn’t earned. The measure sailed through Congress in late 2006, receiving unanimous approval in the Senate.

Dozens of people have been arrested under the law at a time when veterans coming home from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being embraced as heroes. Many of the cases involve men who simply got caught living a lie without profiting from it. Almost all the impostors have been ordered to perform community service.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said it was deciding whether to appeal Tuesday’s ruling.

The people pressing for the construction of this mosque are either opportunist or terrorist supporters who are only interested in once again “shoving it” in the faces of us infidels.

The director of a Dubai-based, Arab television network writes that most of the world’s Muslims couldn’t care less about building a mosque near Ground Zero and that plans to do so would only create a “monument” to terrorists.

Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, director-general of Al-Arabiya TV, wrote a column in the Aug. 16, 2010, London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat arguing that President Obama was wasting his time championing construction of the proposed mosque, which Al-Rashed says the majority of world’s Muslims don’t want anyway.

“I can’t imagine that Muslims [actually] want a mosque at this particular location, because it will become an arena for the promoters of hatred, and a monument to those who committed the crime,” writes Al-Rashed in the column, which was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “Moreover, there are no practicing Muslims in the area who need a place to worship, because it is a commercial district. Is there anyone who is [really] eager [to build] this mosque?”

He adds, “I do not think that the majority of Muslims want to build a monument or a place of worship that tomorrow may become a source of pride for the terrorists and their Muslim followers, nor do they want a mosque that will become a shrine for the haters of Islam.”

New York Islamic leader Faisal Abdul Rauf, president of the Cordoba Initiative, is leading the plan to build a proposed 13-story, $100 million Islamic cultural center and mosque near the corner of Park Place and West Broadway – about two blocks from the site of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

“The individual who submitted the building application – I do not know whether he [really] wants [to build] a mosque that will promote reconciliation, or whether he is [just] an investor looking for quick profits. Because the idea of a mosque right next to a site of destruction is not at all an intelligent one,” Al-Rashed writes. “The last thing Muslims want today is to build a religious center that provokes others, or a symbolic mosque that people will visit as a [kind of] museum next to a cemetery.”

President Obama has released a pair of statements in regards to the planned mosque, qualifying support for the religious freedom of Muslims to build the mosque – even in the shadow that was once cast by the World Trade Center – with a hint that the location of the proposed construction may not be the wisest choice.

Al-Rashed’s column addresses the president’s comments as well:

“U.S. President Barack Obama took a difficult position when he supported the construction of a mosque on a site where 3,000 U.S. citizens were killed by Al-Qaeda terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001,” Al-Rashed writes. “Though the president’s position was correct in principle, that is, in terms of the principle of freedom of worship, I think he took a political stand [on an issue] that is unnecessary and unimportant, even for the Muslims. This mosque is not an issue for Muslims, and they do not care about its construction.”

Al-Rashed’s comments prompted commentary from William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard:

Al-Rashed’s statement, Kristol writes, “should mean the end of plans for a mosque near Ground Zero. Mr. Al-Rashed supports President Obama’s stand for the mosque in principle. … But his practical case against building the mosque is irrefutable. It should lead well-meaning liberals to join with us dastardly conservatives … in calling for the organizers to shelve the plans for a mosque at this site.”